Bygone Echoes
by Shadows Underground
Summary: In the aftermath of the assault on Manhattan, Loki awaits his fate in a SHIELD cell and is visited by Thor, who, despite Loki's insistence, refuses to renounce their brotherhood. Loki takes great pains to prove how very much they are not brothers. Written for the Avengers kinkmeme.


Some people may have noticed that I haven't posted a fic in two years. Unfortunately I cannot promise that posting this one means I am coming off of my hiatus.

Written for the Avengers kinkmeme.

* * *

**Bygone Echoes**

"What do you want?" Loki asks at the end of the echo after the metal door slams shut.

"Or, I suppose, what do _they_ want."

Thor pins his gaze on his brother, sitting in a chair in the corner of his holding cell, one foot propped on the edge of the seat so that his chin rests on his knee. His arms are wrapped loosely around his leg. In this withdrawn position, he doesn't seem to be sulking; rather, he wears an expression of weary boredom.

Thor thinks he can't remember a time when Loki looked so resigned.

The truth is Thor came here on a whim; nobody asked him to. It's a bad idea, he knows, to try to indulge his longing for the Loki of his youth by associating with this mad shadow.

Thor tells him, "I thought my brother could tolerate my company, however briefly."

Loki laughs drily, a joyless chortle. "Your surveillance, you mean."

The words that are not spoken are _I needed to see you because even though every minute you've spent in this realm has been criminal you are my_—

"Brother," Thor begins. He steps forward a few paces, stopping halfway between the door and Loki, not quite sure what he intends to say and knowing better than to invade Loki's personal space. "You—"

"I'm not your brother."

Thor stops midsentence at Loki's interruption.

"I'm not your brother," Loki repeats. His eyes close as he breathes the words. Thor's fingers curl into his palm.

"Loki-"

"I never was."

Loki is looking at him now, and there is an odd sort of wounded hostility in them, the sort one might see on the face of a child whose parent had just unwittingly insinuated he was stupider than he knew himself to be. His back straightens as his leg drops to the floor, green eyes clouded by the mess of unsorted emotions that had tangled and twisted within him for so long and that those less acquainted with suffering learned to label madness. Thor is becoming increasingly, unsettlingly familiar with that despondent green gaze.

He has to stifle a deep sigh and the urge to run a hand, frustrated, through his hair. "Loki, you may threaten realms to which you have no claim with power beyond your control and risk your life in your attempts to sate your bitterness toward me; it changes nothing. You are my brother, and I lo-"

"I AM NOT YOUR BROTHER!"

Loki's screech is joined swiftly by the clash of the metal folding chair slamming against the wall and collapsing on the floor. Loki is on his feet now, his hands clenched into fists and his tired eyes suddenly blazing. He approaches Thor slowly, and before Thor can respond he continues his splenetic outburst.

"Does it look to you like I am begging your pardon? I never asked you to inflict your _love_ on me, Thor. I never asked for the love of a family who would spend the entire span of my life deceiving me, I never asked for the All-Father to rescue me from Jotunheim that day—_I didn't ask for any of this_!"

He has stopped in front of Thor and is shouting his despair in his never-brother's face. His eyes are wet, and as the hottest of his anger fades Thor sees what he might compare to the reflection of a broken heart. He stands before the god of thunder, shoulders and chest quivering slightly with his excited breath, the tempest of fury, resentment, and misery visible in his wild-eyed scowl.

His lower lip trembles ever so slightly, once.

"Loki," Thor says softly, a whisper really. He lifts his hand and lets it settle in his brother's hair, cradling Loki's neck in that achingly familiar almost-embrace. Something breaks in Loki's expression. His eyes close and he seems to lean subconsciously into Thor's touch, he releases his breath in a shuddering exhale.

Then he wrenches himself away and his fist collides with Thor's face.

Thor stumbles back, caught off guard by the punch. He raises his eyes, prepared to intercept a second blow, and glimpses Loki's lithe form leaping at him before he tumbles to the floor under Loki's weight.

Loki lands on top of him, long legs spread to either side of his waist and fingers digging into his neck.

"Stop," Loki growls, his voice choked on the weakness of his own damn heart. "Stop trying to bring me back to you. Your brother died when he fell from the Bifröst—you and I may share a past but in our future we are only enemies. Do as I have, if there is any sense to be found in that saccharine head of yours, and forget that we ever loved each other."

His stare pierces deep into Thor's own eyes, he searches for a sign that his renunciation of their brotherhood has been reciprocated—but in them he finds only the same bygone echoes: _You will always— _

Loki lets out a wretched cry and in a violent instant his hands are gone from Thor's neck.

_—be my—_

Thor swallows the feeling back into his throat as Loki slithers down the length of his body, fingernails catching on armor and continuing downward regardless.

_—brother_.

Loki kneels over Thor's thighs and his body freezes, all spring-loaded tension, his hand slipping between them to palm Thor's crotch.

"Lo-!"

"Believe me, _Odinson_, there is nothing brotherly about what I am going to do to you."

He manages to bare Thor to the still air of the cell before his wrist is caught in a bone-crushing grip and Thor's blue eyes are aflame, whatever words of chastisement had been prepared caught in his throat.

Loki holds his cerulean stare, jaw set, and several seconds pass in slow-time until Loki says slowly from between clenched teeth, "You are hurting me."

By the long memorized instinct to protect his brother, Thor immediately loosens his grip, and though not quite letting go, it's enough for Loki to wrench his hand away and wrap his slender fingers indecently around Thor.

Thor hardly has time to stifle a gasp at his arousal and curse his body's natural reaction at the same time, but he manages it. Loki struggles out of just enough of his garments to accomplish what by now is obvious he intends to do, and never has there been an act of stripping less titillating and more desperate but it doesn't matter because Loki wastes but a fraction of a fraction of a moment lining himself up before impaling himself on Thor's unwillingly hard member.

They cry out at the same time, he thinks, Loki's voice sounding like background noise, dim and muffled to Thor's ears as if they are underwater. Loki, in spite of evident discomfort, forces his body to accept the invasion in full, grunting once and then Thor is fully sheathed. Loki waits not a moment before lifting his hips and slamming back down, and again, and again, and Thor wants to stop him and push him away and vociferate at Loki until he succeeds in returning his brother to sense.

But Thor can't, because he knows, he _knows_ that to cast Loki away now would be giving him the acknowledgment that he wants and the sacrifice Thor refuses to allow him. Instead he squeezes his eyes shut, opens them, fights down his own misery and reaches for Loki's waist so as to slow him in his rampage.

The instant Thor's fingers brush Loki's hip his hand is slapped away, and then Loki is seizing his wrist and pinning it to the floor. And Thor is perfectly capable, he knows, of throwing Loki off, of turning the tables and pinioning Loki beneath him, but he won't, he _can't_ do that to Loki right now. With the contradiction between what he wants to do and what he will allow himself to do he feels Loki stab into him as deeply and as mercilessly as his body is piercing his smaller brother's.

Loki rides him unsparingly, implacably forcing every inch in and out of him as swiftly as possible, jaw set and eyes as traitorously tearful as ever.

Thor's body has been responding halfheartedly to meet Loki's reverse thrusts, and Thor, clinging to his last thread of self-control, realizes belatedly that Loki means to, by whatever necessity, use him until he spends himself. Loki will endure this and infect Thor with his poison, and Thor, helpless to prevent it, should soon after fail to think of Loki as anything more than his nemesis.

He watches his manhood disappear and reappear, espies Loki's entrance forced open to accommodate his generous length, feels the perverse, heinous, terrible pleasure of transpiercing his brother so intimately and wants it to end. His hand spasms at his side and he lets go of his self-control.

Loki clenches tightly around him, his grip on Thor's wrist and shoulder tensing, and his body goes taut. He throws his head back as Thor comes inside of him, riding out the last tremors of unwanted ecstasy. Then he stops moving and waits for Thor to go soft before pulling himself away.

His brother's dilated eyes are haunted green halos. They are blank as Loki looks through him. Blood and cum trickle down Loki's thighs. The same staining, damning red coats Thor's now flaccid sex. Loki crawls slowly off of Thor. Although he is still half hard, he makes no move to finish himself off.

The cell, with their noises of pain no longer bouncing off its walls, grows dense with silence.

Loki, after a spell, draws a breath and forces out, "Have you nothing to say to your Jotun corpse of a brother? Thor."

Thor's normal reaction of beating his problems senseless—there is no room for it here. He has time yet with Loki, when he brings him back to Asgard and, unhappily, sees him punished. And, in an uncharacteristic instance of self-deploring commiseration, he thinks he deserves this latest treachery of Loki's—to share in the pain that Loki has borne alone for so long.

"Loki."

The words that are not spoken are _You are my brother, even now_. Thor, now standing, does not move to embrace the broken creature on the floor.

He walks the few paces back to the door. The distance seems longer this time. He pauses just before he exits to turn to Loki and say, "I will collect you shortly, and you will come with me home to Asgard."

Loki does not look at him. He even now appears to be curled in on himself and he will not meet Thor's eyes. Thor accepts this. It's better than risking his detestably candid eyes giving him away. Loki is perceptive. He would know, if he looked.

Thor only allows his eyes to linger for the smaller fragment of a moment more, then he passes through the door. On the other side, he slides the bolt back into place and leaves Loki alone inside of that windowless room.

He doesn't go right away, though. He rests his back against the heavy door, just standing, just breathing. He brings his hand to his face, where it slides down to rest over his mouth. He stays there, for just a moment, before he has to return to his comrades.

"Loki."

The name passes his lips like a confession.

"Brother."

The word passes his lips like a prayer.

**Fin.**

* * *

Shadows Underground, 2012


End file.
